Ethiopian environmental protection agency makes contacts in Umeå

The Ethiopian Environmental Protection Agency recently visited Stockholm and Umeå through a multi-million project, which Sustainable Sweden and the Ethiopian government have just started. The pilot project aims to improve the Ethiopian environmental work, and to create Eco-municipalities in Ethiopia. These improvements would expect to lead to both a more sustainable Ethiopian society, and a source of income for the country, in terms of increased eco-tourism to Ethiopia.

The main purpose of the study tour was to give the participants a deeper understanding of how Sweden has, for many decades now, worked with sustainable development, and become one of the most developed countries in the world in terms of sustainability.

But what are the success criteria? What kind of tools are used? How can different sectors work together to gain involvement from all areas of the society? The tour was designed as a training program with a combination of theory and field studies.

In Stockholm, Berhane Berhe Weldesellassie and Berhanu Hailu Genremedhin had the opportunity to meet the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. This meeting was one which everyone hoped could lead to a collaboration between the two organisations.

In Umeå, there was a strong focus on waste management, both recycling, reuse and disposal were presented. There was a lot of focus on sustainable urban development in the form of Urban Greening and sustainable construction, which was made visualised through GreenZone and Hållbara Ålidhem.

In a meeting with the Environmental Technology Centre AB (MTC), and two researchers from the University of Örebro (Per-Erik Olsson and Per Ivarsson), got the opportunity to present a project that MTC and Örebro University are currently working on. The project aims to clean the Akaki River, one of the world’s most polluted rivers, which runs through the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. For MTC and Örebro University, it was a nice opportunity to have a personal meeting with the Ethiopian Environmental Protection Agency, which they have not been able to have previously. This will hopefully help the project that they are working on.